Tag: writing

Workshop and conference miscellanea, other events

- Stacy 5 Comments
  • Just got invited last minute to join a panel at ASJA on Saturday on “Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch” from 11 a.m. to noon this Saturday, April 30, at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC. I believe it’s open to the public (not sure if there’s a cost) so if you’re going, see you there.
  • Only a few weeks away from the NESCBWI conference in Fitchburg, MA, which I believe sold out, but if you were one of the lucky ones who got a ticket, I’m looking forward to doing a workshop on worldbuilding and a talk on diversity in fantasy in science fiction. I’ve given “Beyond Orcs and Elves” before, in California and in Utah, so this will be my East Coast version of it, and then after for those who didn’t make it to any of those events I plan on sharing at least parts of it on the blog here.
  • how not to talk down to your YA audienceIf you were to be in my worldbuilding workshop, what would you want to hear about? What kind of handouts would you find useful? I’ve done this workshop before, but it’s been a while and I’m working on updating it, so feel free to jot down a wish list. This is another topic that I’ve been meaning to blog more about, as well, so once the presentation/workshop is over I plan to share at least parts of it here.
  • While I’m in Fitchburg, I’m sad to say, I’m going to miss the Diversity in YA Tour stop in New York. Of COURSE all the cool things are happening on the same weekend! But that doesn’t mean that YOU have to miss out on it. They start the weekend after next with San Francisco, where friends Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, and J.A. Yang will be signing (Cindy and Malinda are the masterminds behind the whole thing and will be at every stop), as well as Gene Luen Yang, who I don’t know personally but you might have heard about through, I don’t know, his National Book Award nomination for American Born Chinese or the book winning the Printz and the Eisner. Then they’ll be in Austin, where they’re joined by a large contingency of authors including Lee & Low author Guadalupe Garcia McCall, whose debut Under the Mesquite comes out soon. And if you’ve read and loved Bleeding Violet as I did and are in the Austin area, Dia Reeves will be there, too, as well as several other notable authors. In Chicago, they’ll be joined by Nnedi Okorafor, among others. In Boston, you’ve got Holly Black, Francisco X. Stork . . . the list is getting too long. Just go to the tour page and look at all the cool people who will be at each stop! I will wave in Cindy and Malinda’s general direction as we pass, three ships in the night (or day as the case may be), me on the way to Massachusetts from New York City and them the other way around.
  • Then later this month is BEA. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of author friends in town. If you’re coming in town for BEA, drop me a line.
  • Before BEA is School Library Journal’s Day of Dialogue, which sounds like it’ll be a great event—Katherine Paterson, discussions on diversity, apps, debut authors. Not a bad price for SLJ subscribers, too.

May will be a busy month, and then in June all of publishing will be at ALA (I don’t believe I’ll be going to it myself this year, but Lee & Low will have a booth), then later in the year is WorldCon in Reno, which I wish I could attend but likely won’t be able to shoehorn in between all my work, hopefully a trip home at some point in the summer, and Girls’ Camp for the girls in my church, which I’m chaperoning this year. I kind of feel like saying all this stuff out loud is making the summer feel almost over, the way that when I work on books for a year or more in advance I kind of feel like I’m living in the future. But you live in the present, so you should schedule a few of these events in!

What I’m looking for: “The bright shiny promises of the future”

- Stacy 1 Comment

Dystopias are hot right now, that’s for sure. And I do love a good dystopia. After all, I’m a child of the 80s. Who doesn’t love The Terminator or Mad Max (especially the cheese of Beyond Thunderdome)? Or to use the example of a more present-day dystopia, space cowboys in Firefly? I love Joss Whedon, but his “shiny” futures (and presents) involve a lot of loved-character deaths, often in non-heroic, dystopian ways, and lately involving a lot of gunshot wounds to the head (I’m looking at you, Dollhouse). I call that dystopia.

But I’d like to see as much hope as I might despair. Oh, sure, dystopias often have a lot of hope, too—in fact, that’s probably one of the reasons I was frustrated with the last book of the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, because the end didn’t feel as hopeful as I wanted it to be. I feel like Matched by Ally Condie presents the possibility of a lot more hope—though we’re still waiting on book 2 and I could be wrong about that. And when your world is filled with zombie hordes, how much hope is left to the human race, let alone for any particular individual? I’m kind of scared to read The Dark and Hollow Places for this reason, though I’ve heard it’s really good. (And I loved books 1 and 2, so why am I so scared, even if it isn’t all that hopeful an ending?)

Science fiction is on a comeback slope, and most of it is dystopian. Yet kids, particularly, are all about hope for the future—even the teens who think we currently live in a dystopia hopefully have hope for their own futures, and plan to make the world a better place than the war-torn, disaster-filled world we’re living in right now. We need stories that address the hopeful side of life, as well, particularly in science fiction.

Farah Mendlesohn, a children’s book scholar, wrote an excellent Horn Book piece on this idea a couple years ago. While I don’t agree with her completely, she makes some great points (in my opinion, many of the old guard of SF don’t recognize children’s SF not because the writers aren’t SF experts, but because many old-guard SF writers still write as if it’s 1960 techwise—it baffles me that some of the old guard don’t recognize the genius that is Scott Westerfeld’s work as far as forward-looking tech, and I think addressing social concerns is vitally important too; not all science is hard science, says the social science major). (Equally important, though, is her point that many in children’s lit don’t understand the history of SF in children’s—those who don’t know who Norton and Heinlein are need to fix that problem!)

One point, in particular, is particularly important to my purpose here, though:

In their fiction for younger people, Heinlein, Norton, and their contemporaries wrote with an eye on concerns very similar to those found in adult science fiction: the world of work, the world of changing technology, and the bright new opportunities promised by these things. They could do this for two reasons. First, the world of teens was much closer to the world of adults than it is today. Norton and Heinlein’s audience was either already earning their own living or would be a few years in the future. Now the fifteen-year-old reader might be a decade away from the professional workplace. Second, Heinlein and Norton shared the values of the adult SF market and assumed that their role was to introduce younger readers to that material. They loved what teen SF readers loved: the bright shiny promises of the future.

…And perhaps because of YA literature’s preoccupation with social problems, science fiction for teens became increasingly a place for adults to warn the young about the future. At first glance this might be seen as introducing a healthy skepticism, but it was relentless. Very few SF books published for the teen market since 1970 saw the future as something to look forward to, and the downbeat books are not merely skeptical, they are downright doom-mongering and disempowering.

…So we have a bunch of readers who want stuff that tells them about the world, and the future, and what they can do to take part in it, and they are mostly being told that it’s really depressing, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and now is the best of all possible worlds. Is it any wonder they head for the adult shelves? The potential readers of SF written for teens have little respect for it, because they themselves can compare it to what is on offer for adults and know it does not match up.

…We may want children to learn science and languages, but our societies regard children and adults who enjoy doing that as a bit odd. The conflation of all children into one pool is improper, as a general principle, but when dealing with the children who like science fiction, it ignores the issue that those children—and their adult counterparts, readers and critics alike—have developed their own system of genre-specific criteria.

Galaxy GamesThese are some good points, and I hope that books like Greg Fishbone’s Galaxy Games series will at least in part address the need for more hopeful, forward-looking science fiction for children. But those who warn of doom and gloom also have a point—socially, at least, and environmentally, we have a lot of things wrong with the world, and as Whitney Houston says, our children are the future, right? They’re our hope. So how about some good books set in the far future that did what Star Trek did, but in a way that doesn’t dismiss the conflicts that had to happen to get them to that state of happy-happy future? What about eco-engineering, and green space exploration? What about diversity in the future that also addresses our historical problems socioeconomic and racial conflict? That is, what’s interesting to me isn’t so much “We’ve solved all of Earth’s problems! No war! No need for money!” to paraphrase Picard bragging about the future to a 23rd-century woman in First Contact. What interests me is what brings us to that … not utopia, because certainly there was still conflict in Star Trek, but a better world, certainly, in many ways.

Tankborn near finalI’m excited about Galaxy Games because it’ll tackle some of these ideas for a middle-grade set in the context of sports, but I’d also be interested to see what a hopeful science fiction story for teens might look like. Space travel, new worlds, the final frontier, etc. One current book that addresses the world of work is David Macinnis Gill’s Black Hole Sun, though still in a dystopian way. Tu’s list for this fall also has one, Tankborn—at age 15, GENs have to enter the world of work. Still, dystopian. I’m not looking for utopian, necessarily—everyone’s utopia is someone else’s dystopia, often enough—but I am wondering what a modern Heinleinian (Heinleinesque?) tale might look like (perhaps Black Hole Sun IS today’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel?), and hoping for something like that in future submissions.

And feel free to suggest published books for a list of “hopeful” SF for teens.

LTUE schedule

- Stacy 1 Comment

Also, one more reminder: If you’re in Utah and have a chance to get to LTUE next week—only $20-25 to rub elbows with a bunch of professionals working in fantasy and science fiction right now and free for students—you should definitely come. I’ve been filling up my schedule left and right, and if you’re at BYU you might also want to know about the English dept event I’ll be at on Wednesday night (February 16):

BYU’s STET Student Editing Club presents . .  .

Stacy Whitman, editor of fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults

  • Editorial director of Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, New York (publisher of multicultural fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults)
  • Freelance editor
  • Former editor at Mirrorstone, an imprint of Wizards of the Coast (publisher of children’s and YA fantasy)
  • Former editor at Houghton Mifflin, Boston
  • Former editor at Electrical Apparatus (a trade magazine), Chicago
  • Graduate (M.A.) of Simmons College, Boston, in children’s literature, 2005
  • Graduate (B.S.) of BYU, 2001

Wednesday, February 16, 2011
5:10 to 7:40 p.m.
3714 HBLL

I’ll be talking about publishing both for a writer’s perspective (because this is picture book author Rick Walton’s class, after all) and an editorial perspective (because the professor over the editing minor, Mel Thorne, who also happens to be my old boss, is bringing his students along too).

If you aren’t a BYU student or faculty, come to LTUE! Here’s my (hopefully) final schedule:

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

2:00 PM:

– Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Fantasy and Science Fiction for Young Readers (Stacy Whitman) Recent cover whitewashing controversies and the internet discussion tagged #RaceFail have brought to light how little diversity can be found in fantasy and science fiction for young readers. We’ll discuss the history of diversity in these books, including diversification through fantasy races that all share the same traits, and ways for authors to consider diversifying their own stories. We’ll also discuss writing cross-culturally, cultural awareness, issues of appropriation, and other things to consider as you write.

6:00 PM:

– Marketing and Publicity–what can you do? (Stacy Whitman, Bree DeSpain, James Dashner, Laura Card, Elana Johnson) Closet Costuming (Heather Monson, Jessica Haron, Sarah B. Seiter)

Friday, February 18th, 2011

Noon:

– Romance vs. Story with Romantic Elements: Injecting romance into saving the world (John Brown,  Ami Chopine, Stacy Whitman, Lynn Kurland)

6:00 PM:

– How NOT to talk down to your YA audience (Michaelbrent Collings, Clint Johnson, Stacy Whitman, James Dashner, Frank L. Cole)

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

10:00 AM:

– What Exactly Does an Editor Do, Anyway? (Lisa Mangum, Suzanne Vincent, Stacy Whitman, Tristi Pinkston, Karen C. Evans, Dave Wolverton)

Noon:

– Anime/Manga–what it is; what’s good in SFF (Stacy Whitman, Jessica Harmon, Scott Parkin (M), Joe Monson, Charlotte Randle)

I feel like I’m missing a panel I was supposed to be on, but I think that’s it. But there’s always plenty of chat in the hallways between panels. I always go to these conventions looking for writers who know their stuff, and what better way to learn your business than to come listen to a bunch of experts like James Dashner, Jessica Day George, Bree Despain, Dan Wells, Tracy Hickman, and a long list of others talk about writing memorable villains, pitching to agents/editors, paying the bills via your dreams, religion in science fiction, what writers wish they had done if they could do it all over again, how to recover from writing slumps, Tracy Hickman’s Killer Breakfast (hilarious how-fast-can-you-get-killed-off D&D for a crowd), what you can and can’t do in a YA novel, finding a writing group, dialog tags and speech patterns, the problem of sequels, how to write a good short story….

Etc.

You get the idea.

Life, the Universe, and Everything

- Stacy 8 Comments

Between the holidays, a nasty bout of the flu, and being busy with preparing Fall books for design and getting next spring’s books well on their way, I haven’t had much time to even think about what I’d post here lately. If you’re interested in my flittering day-to-day thoughts, follow me on Twitter—it’s not much more there lately, but it’s more!

I pop in here today to let you know about Life, the Universe, & Everything 29: The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about it in previous years—it’s one of the best little cons I’ve ever been to. It’s a local convention run by BYU students and Utah Valley residents who are fantasy & SF buffs. In recent years, it’s always been free. This year, they decided to charge a nominal amount so that the budget woes they’ve had to deal with (the previous venue required them to offer it for free) will be solved. But $20 still isn’t that much for a 2 or 3-day convention, and if you’re a BYU student/staff/faculty, you still get in free.

ETA: It’s not just BYU students, I’m told, that get in free. It’s anyone with a student ID, including other colleges and younger kids w/ student IDs for high school, for example. An email recently went out that if you home school, there are ways to show that too.

What will you get for your $20? Pretty much the best that Utah has to offer in science fiction and fantasy—and that’s saying a lot. James Dashner, the author of The Maze Runner, will be the Guest of Honor. My friends, authors Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells always go (though I don’t see Brandon on the schedule, so something may have come up for him), as well as webcomic artist Howard Tayler (the Writing Excuses trifecta). Tracy Hickman, Jessica Day George, Mette Ivie Harrison, Bree Despain, Janci Olds (who has a book forthcoming from Macmillan), Eric James Stone, Robert J. Defendi, Rebecca Shelley, John Brown, Larry Correia, Julie Wright, Robison Wells, Jake Black…

I know I missed somebody there. Oh—ME!

And it doesn’t matter if you’re an aspiring writer, a pro, or a fan—there’s something there for everyone.

Once my schedule is pinned down a little tighter, I’ll post it here. You’ve got a month to plan–if you’re in Utah (or want to take a trip there), plan for Feb. 17-19 at BYU. It’s no longer in the Wilkinson Center–it’s now hosted by Conferences and Workshops. Register here (or give them a call at the number on that page). That means better parking, even if there are fewer easy lunch options in the Conference Center on campus.

Hope to see you in Feb.!

Writer question: E-book rights?

- Stacy 3 Comments

A writer question I received this month, the answer for which I think anyone submitting to Tu will want to know:

I would like to submit my YA fantasy to Tu Books, but wondered if you accept submissions from books where the ebook rights have been taken. My book was recently accepted by an e-book publisher. I recently read an interview about Tu Books and its quest to publish YA speculative fiction with multicultural characters. This is something I have strive to do in my writing. May I mail my submission package to Tu Books or would you rather not see books where ebook rights are already taken?

Due to the way the industry is changing right now, Tu must be able to do an ebook edition of any book we publish. Things are changing fast, and with the drop in e-reader prices continuing to change the way people read, teens are becoming more likely to look for ebooks (not to mention crossover adult audiences who definitely look for ebooks). The release of (relatively) affordable full-color readers such as the Color Nook and the iPad means that younger readers, in smaller numbers, will be next. We’re seeing a lot of changes right now as we head into the holiday season—B&N, for example, is growing its ebook business even as it continues to have sluggish sales in its print book business. You can check out e-books from most libraries, too—books that return themselves without costing you a fine for forgetting to return them or not making it to the library on a particular day. As more libraries figure out digital curation, that segment will grow.

E-readers are unlikely to take over the ascendancy of print books in children’s and YA books anytime soon, but ebooks are definitely a growing market, and one that we plan to aggressively explore with Tu’s books. Therefore, manuscripts submitted to us absolutely must have ebook rights available.

Sorry to disappoint, but it’s something we feel strongly about.

Resources for writers: Links for reflecting on white privilege and writing the Other

- Stacy 1 Comment

I promised the writers of the Ventura/Santa Barbara SCBWI that I’d post the list of resources I flashed at them at the end of my talk so they’d be able to actually reference them. These should also have been emailed out to the local listservs, but for those who aren’t on those listservs, and I’m sure this list will be of use for anyone thinking about writing someone who is, as Ursula Le Guin says, “a being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or the number of its legs and heads.” I can’t help but add for that last item: this is speculative fiction we’re talking about, after all. (That’s from her book mentioned below, The Language of the Night, in the essay “American SF and the Other”—a GREAT read for anyone thinking about these issues.)

Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other—both a workshop and a book
“Appropriate Cultural Appropriation” by Nisi Shawl
“Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl
Le Guin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other,” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989. (Out of print—your best bet is your local library/interlibrary loan or finding it online used.)
Le Guin, Ursula K. “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989.
“Being Poor” by John Scalzi
“Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today” by John Scalzi  paired with his next post on narrative usurpation, covering why he wrote the previous post

Reader question: What’s an imprint?

- Stacy

Ingrid writes to ask:

How exactly does an imprint of a publishing company work? Are imprints more specific in subject matter or is there a deeper connection with the parent company?

Are your chances of getting published better with an imprint or does the sale of your work do better with a more well-known publisher?

I would like to submit my manuscript to a smaller company because I think that they will “get” my writing style, but this company is an imprint of a bigger one. Is it safer to submit to the parent company and hope for the best or will an imprint be more helpful and “reachable?”

First off, let’s distinguish between a smaller company and an imprint. Big and small publishers will both have imprints. You may have an advantage getting published with a smaller press because they’ll often be able to give more personalized attention from the editorial stage on through production and promotion—though that can depend, too. I’ll get to small publisher vs. large publisher in another post. First, what is an imprint?

An imprint is publishing speak for a brand. It’s usually not a separate company from the parent publisher; rather, it’s a way to divide books within the publisher that might just be on paper (editors and other staff might work across imprints; the books are simply branded differently depending on genre or audience) or might be a fiscal division of the company, depending on the size of the company and the way it’s organized.

For example, MacMillan reorganized last year so that all their children’s imprints (FSG, Feiwel and Friends, Holt, etc.) are in one division of the company, MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group. Now, I don’t know the company well enough to know whether the editorial for each imprint is divided into different departments underneath the group (I imagine so—the articles I’ve read mention that they’ll share art departments and production resources), but certain editors only work on Feiwel and Friends, and others only work on FSG. At least, that’s how I understand it as an outsider to the company—some editors could be working across imprints, the way that Sharyn November works on both Viking and Firebird books at Penguin. It just depends on how the company structures itself.

When I worked at Wizards of the Coast, I only worked on Mirrorstone books, not any of the adult novels, and not any of the game books (such as Dungeons and Dragons rule books). Mirrorstone was the imprint I worked on, but Wizards of the Coast was the company I worked for, which was itself a division of Hasbro, the toy and game company. There were departmental lines between the novels and the games (at least at first; this changed, as corporations are wont to do), and within the novels lines, editors were assigned to particular imprints. When the now-defunct Discoveries imprint was launching, all the adult editors worked on Discoveries as well as their own Wizards-imprint books, but Mirrorstone editors worked only on Mirrorstone. Here at Lee & Low, I only work on Tu’s books, and the other editors only work on Lee & Low books, not Tu.

Editors will pass manuscripts over to editors at other imprints within the company if something has been misdirected to us, but we prefer that a book be directed to the right imprint. Hence, if your manuscript fits a particular imprint, it’s best to submit to that imprint—if they take unsolicited submissions. Most of the bigger companies don’t take unsolicited submissions, and if the larger company doesn’t, usually the imprint doesn’t. Check their submission guidelines, which are usually linked on company websites. You also might poke around on Google, blogs, and Twitter to see which editors work for which imprints; if the individual editor has submission guidelines, you can then figure out whether your book might be directed to that particular editor. If the editor doesn’t post submission guidelines or specifically says they’re not open to unsolicited submissions, you’ll need an agent to submit to them.

As far as acceptance goes, the little imprints at bigger companies can be more selective than general submissions at the parent publisher, depending on what the imprint focuses on. A more literary imprint, for example, will cull “commercial”-feeling manuscripts. A science fiction and fantasy imprint will cull manuscripts that have no speculative nature to them. I run into this a lot—people will hear “multicultural fantasy for children & young adults” and only hear “multicultural” or “fantasy,” not both. A lot of the manuscripts I receive don’t hit the specific niche I’m working to fill, and so they’re automatic no’s. So unless you are sure that your manuscript definitely fits everything an imprint is looking for—AND you’ve checked whether they accept unsolicited submissions—it’s best to find either another imprint/publisher to submit to or find an agent, who can help you in targeting your manuscript to the right editors within a closed house.

The best chance of being published—whether with a big company or a small one, with the parent publisher imprint or a small imprint—is to write a good book that fits what they’re looking for. If a publisher only does picture books, they’re not going to want to see a YA novel, and vice versa.

But it sounds like you’ve looked at the books they publish and think that their sensibility is the right fit. The next step—after polishing your manuscript to perfection, of course—is to simply submit to them, if they’re open to unsolicited submissions, and see what happens. Publishing isn’t a crap shoot—your best chance at getting published is to submit widely after finding a list of publishers that your manuscript fits. Once you start getting bites, that’s the time to get down to brass tacks about which one will have better marketing, better distribution, which one has the editor you want to work with, and so forth.

The same goes for agents. Don’t just submit to your one “dream agent.” I’m not convinced there is such a thing in abstract, before you’ve started querying and talking to those who are interested in your work. Once you start getting deeper in the process, a lot of clues will come up in the interaction to help you decide if that’s the right direction to go. If you have the rare advantage of choosing between actual offers from a large publisher, another large publisher’s prestigious imprint, and a small publisher, that’s when you start looking at each company’s track record in sales, distribution, marketing, public relations, and so forth. Until that time comes, though, cast a wide net.

The question about sales I’ll leave for another post, because that gets back as well to the advantages and disadvantages of going with small presses vs. large companies, complicated by the imprint question. I’ll try to address that later this week.

From the archives: Word counts

- Stacy 2 Comments

This was posted on the old Tu Publishing blog back before I moved to New York and joined Lee & Low. You may have seen it there, or you might not have. It wasn’t ported over to the new website with some of the other content (the blog has been folded into the main Lee & Low blog, where you can get all sorts of great commentary and information on multicultural topics). An LJ reader asked about word counts in response to my last post, and I think that this kind of thing can be helpful to writers as a general guideline. Note that nothing I declare here is hard and fast. There are some writers who write very short YAs, for example—but those people generally are also not debut writers, and this kind of info is often most helpful to those getting started on their careers.

So, without further ado, the post—edited slightly to reflect that we’re now six months later than when the original post was put up in January:

We try to be specific in our submission guidelines, but there are some things that might not be clear to a new writer. For the most essential of essentials of children’s literature, please make sure to research the genre on Harold Underdown’s The Purple Crayon (and we highly recommend his Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books, as well, for great basic information).

But some things are more specific, and preferences can vary from publisher to publisher and imprint to imprint. Word count, for example, is something we don’t see too many guidelines on because so much can depend on what a publisher’s goals are. So let’s talk about what Tu Books would like to see in word counts.

First of all, when we say we are not looking for chapter books, we are specifically referring to the “intermediate reader” or “transitional reader” chapter books like Magic Treehouse. They’re shorter books for kids who have just become fluent enough readers for their own independent books, with real chapters. They are not to be confused with “early reader” books, which have fewer words and are targeted to a slightly younger reader than a chapter book. While we love chapter books, we want to focus more on older readers. There is no such thing as a “YA chapter book.”

Middle grade novels are generally for ages 8–12, or about 3rd grade to 6th or 7th grade. Readers tend to be pretty fluid through publishing categories—a third grader might still be reading picture books for older kids and chapter books while devouring middle grade books, all at the same time. But middle grade novels are a specific section of the bookstore and have specific requirements. It’s a marketing category. That section might be called “Independent Readers” or “Middle Grade” or “Children’s Novels,” depending on the store.

What happens if the book is too long? (Sketch by Howard Tayler)

Generally, middle grade novels are no less than 30–35,000 words at the minimum, and usually a whole lot more words than that. They can range anywhere from 30,000 words to 70,000 words or longer, especially in fantasy. If your “novel” is only 17,000 words, it’s too short. A 90,000 word manuscript might be a touch too long for a middle grade audience unless you’re J.K. Rowling and have already hooked tens of millions of readers with three or four books. Especially given the current economic climate—in which paper and shipping and everything else involved in printing a book is costing more—it’s best to keep a middle grade novel under the 50,000–60,000 word range, because then the design of the book can still be beautiful while keeping the page count relatively low, which ensures that even reluctant readers won’t find the printed book too daunting.

YA novels are for the 12–18 age group—the teen section of the bookstore—and word count might range from 45,000 words on the low end to 100,000 words on the high end. To tell a complex enough story for a sophisticated YA readership, though, 45,000 might be a bit low. However, plenty of really awesome YA writers have done it in that many words, so I wouldn’t rule it out. But again, if your YA book is 17,000 words, it’s either a short story or not finished. And remember the economy: too long can be hard to work with, as well. Consider whether your 100,000 word opus might really be two novels in a series or if perhaps some of the subplots might be simplified or saved for another book. If not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but it’s something to be aware of.

These are all just guidelines, of course—like the Pirate Code, they’re not laws. But if you’ve got a 250,000 word “YA novel,” you’ve actually likely got three to five different books masquerading as one (or just one honking adult novel, depending on the subject matter). If your story is for older readers yet is only 10,000 words long, you’ve got an extremely long short story that will require a different publishing venue, or you haven’t fleshed out the story nearly enough. What’s missing?

Is my character “black enough”

- Stacy 14 Comments

I recently got this question from a writer, who agreed that answering it on the blog would be useful:

My hero is a fifteen-year-old African American boy [in a science fiction story]. A few of my alpha readers (not all) have said that he doesn’t sound “black enough.” I purposely made him an Air Force brat who has lived in several different countries to avoid having to use cliche hood-terminology. I want him to be universal.

Do you have thoughts on this either way?

Is there a possibility that my potential readers could really be offended that a) I am “a white girl writing a book about black people” and b) that my character doesn’t sound black enough? I’ve looked through your blog and website and haven’t found anything specific to my needs on this particular question. Perhaps I missed it?

…should I use Ebonics or not use Ebonics?

First of all, black people—just as white people or Latino people—are a very diverse group of people. There are people who speak in Ebonics [ETA: which I believe would be more accurately referred to as BVE–Black Vernacular English] and people who speak plain old suburban English, people who speak with any of a variety of Southern accents and people who have Chicago accents, people who speak with French or Spanish accents (or who speak French or Spanish or an African language). So the question of whether a particular character in a particular situation sounds “black enough” is a complicated question, one that even the African American community can’t necessarily agree on. Within the community (and I say this because I asked a coworker who is African American, who can speak with more authority on the subject than I can) it’s often a question that draws on complicated factors, such as money, privilege, “selling out,” skin tone (relative darkness or lightness—literally, being “black enough”), and hair texture, which all relate to how much a part of which community a person might be.

The question, then, is fraught with loaded meaning not only to do with stereotypes, but also socioeconomic meanings. [And, edited to add, because it might not be clear enough: The question can also tend to be offensive because of that diversity and the loaded meaning the question carries.]

Which leads me to the question of your alpha readers. What are their demographics? Is it a diverse group? What is their experience with the military? Is more than one of them African American? When writing cross-culturally, you’ll want to be sure that your beta readers include sufficient numbers of the member of the group you’re writing about. Every individual experience will be different—one person’s opinion on whether a character reads as African American will probably differ from another person’s, especially if their socioeconomic background and regional experiences are different. An African American from the St. Louis suburbs will have a different life experience than someone who grew up on a farm in Louisiana, whose experiences will probably be different from a kid who grew up in Harlem or someone else who grew up in Seattle.

If your local writing group isn’t very diverse, you might need to branch out for beta readers who you can rely on to comment on that particular element of your story—perhaps through an online writing group, perhaps through the SCBWI. You might even approach a local high school and ask if any of their students who come from a similar background to your character might be willing to give you feedback on your manuscript. Do you have connections with a local Air Force base? Perhaps you might network with people you know in the military to find someone who can give you feedback on that aspect of the character building.

To answer your other questions: it’s always possible that someone will be offended by a white person writing about a person of color, but generally, most readers I’ve talked to who care about diversity in fantasy and science fiction want that diversity to come from everyone, not just writers of color. This is why I emphasized alpha readers—it’s important to make sure that if you’re not from that background, you do your research (which it sounds like you have) and then run it past someone other than yourself who understands that culture or background (in this case, you’ve got two cultures going on: African American and military, particularly Air Force, which has a completely different culture than Army).

A few someones is even better, to ensure that you get different points of view and can mesh that feedback into something that works for your particular character, who will be an individual in his own right and not a representative of a group that plays into a stereotype.

Which leads into your next question: should you use Ebonics? And the answer to that is: I don’t know. Do African Americans in the military use Ebonics? Do only some of them, and does it depend on their family history/region of origin? Do their kids speak to each other in Ebonics? Or do they have their own way of speaking that’s particular to the Air Force community? (My uncle was in the Air Force and I have a couple cousins who might read this who may be able to answer that question; they’ve never spoken anything but “Midwestern” to me, but they might have spoken differently to their friends who were also Air Force brats.)

And that’s important too: people often have different vocabularies when talking to different groups of people. When my roommates from Georgia talked to their family, their accents became stronger. When I talk to my rural family, the word “crik” has been known to creep back into my lexicon. So ask yourself, “what’s the context my character is in?” as well.

And of course, that’s just me spouting off from the point of view of an editor. Readers, feel free to chime in and help out writers who write cross-culturally: what other issues should they be aware of when writing African American characters?